The Google firing confirms a working hypothesis I have been pondering recently. The French Revolution is attacking the American Revolution.
The American Revolution was sparked by the Enlightenment, Judeo/Christian moral beliefs, mixed with Greek and Roman philosophy and political theories. At its best, the American Revolution promotes universal human equality–a work still in progress–individual freedom, freedom of thought and speech, the rule of law, etc..
The French Revolution, in contrast, is Utopian, collectivist, authoritarian, intolerant, and punitive. It is anti-religion generally and anti-Christianity specifically. It accepts the belief that the ends justify the means.
At its worst, the FR unleashed some of history’s most vile and destructive tyrannies: The First Republic and The Terror, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, etc.
In its more mundane iterations, French Revolution ideologies express as the social fascism we increasingly witness today, such as the stifling of free speech on college campuses and thought control pogroms that cost professionally competent people their jobs for expressing disfavored opinions.
And here’s its inherent weakness: The French Revolution is never satisfied. Wrongs are never fully remedied. It grows ever more extreme until, eventually, it eats its own. Just ask Robespierre.